Thursday, April 05, 2007

Die Weltwoche is Swiss news magazine that published an interview with Richard Lindzen by Peer Teuwsen. It provides some interesting insights. This is for those who tell us to be nice to the denialists, others who think you can debate them on intellectual grounds and for the mice in the woodwork. (UPDATE: a few things cleaned up, spelling etc. One major point, I had to check but Lindzen really did say " what do you think that scientists rush to goosestep behind Al Gore" instead of the milder formulation I had before : "rush to march behind...")

What follows is a translation. Suggestions for changes are welcome.---------------------------------------------------

Herr Lindzen, you are called a “climate denier”Does that make you feel like an outsider?I am no outsider.If you want to sit still for propaganda, that’s your problem.I work at the world famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), I am well regarded by my colleagues, pay attention for a moment to what you said.I am a Holocaust survivor.My parents fled Germany in 1938.Whoever calls me a “climate denier” insults me - and he insults his own intelligence

[Note: Eli calls Lindzen a climate denialist, and given the crap Lindzen deals below to those who disagree with him, he has little grounds to object to strong words.]

Why?

Because this topic is so complex, has so many facets.Or do you really believe that all scientists rush to goosestep behind Al Gore?That all agree with him?Anyone that has even one or two neurons between his two ears should know that anyone who used the expression “climate denier” has lost the argument.

Have you gotten death threats like some of your colleagues that express their skepticism publicly

Oh, yeah, there were a few E-mails that told me to go to hell, but that is not a death threat.

In spite of that, what gives?You have to figure on hate when you ask questions in such a climate.People want to believe that they are better when they believe with their whole hearts that the world will end when they don’t save it immediately.In that case people develop a religious enthusiasm, they become like Islamists.Anyone who stirs people up so much should be ashamed.

You figured on attacks?

Naturally.I wrote in the Wall Street Journal that scientists were suppressed, have lost their work because they expressed skepticism about some “Facts” in the climate controversy.Laurie David, the producer of Al Gore’s film has a blog, in which she wrote, she was happy that those scientists were finally suppressed.She also wrote that without question such scientists that seek to scientifically investigate their doubts should not be funded. That contradicts the way that science is understood to work, that its hypotheses always have to be tested again and again and can only be falsified.Naturally, but it is easy to to corrupt science, it has happened many times.I was at the international meeting of geophysicists (AGU meeting) last winter in San Francisco.Al Gore spoke.And his message was “ You should have the courage to join the consensus, speak publicly about it and freely to suppress the disloyal.The audience was inspired

What did you do?

I shrugged my shoulders and went out and read George Orwell.

What would you do.You are stirred up about an Oscar winner, Al Gore, who says things like “The continued existence of our civilization is in play”More is in play, namely companies like Generation Investment Management, Lehman Brothers, Apple, Google, Gore has major financial interests in all of these.Al Gore combines insanity and corruption

Wait a minute, those are serious accusations.

First, he fosters hysteria.And second he has major financial interest.He is simply not independent

OK, you say that climate change is not so alarming because the models overestimate the influence of CO2 on climate.In saying that you contradict 95% of scientists.But it is so.The influence of CO2 is much smaller that the models have predicted.You then have to choices.The model is false or the model is right and something unknown makes up the difference.The modelers have unfortunately taken the second way and claim that aerosols make up the difference.But, as the IPCC says, we don’t know anything about aerosols.The current models are tuned.If there is a problem, then call it aerosol.That is a dishonorable way out.The Chief of the Natural Environmental Research Council (NERC) in Great Britain said something remarkable.Climate change must be man made because he can’t imagine anything else.That is a statement touching on intellectual incompetence, which a scientist should never utter.

Mr. Lindzen, what then are the facts?Physics does not lie about the greenhouse effect.The CO2 concentration has increased.The 20th century was over all warmer by 0.5 C.

How do you explain the most recent warming.

I don’t believe it.The warming occurred from 1976 to 1986, then it plateaued.

You accept that it in general has become warmer?Yes, but we are speaking of tenths.If you take into account the uncertainty in the data, there was warming from 1920 to 1940, cooling until 1970, and warming again until the beginning of the 90s.But you can’t say that so exactly, whatever you think.There is no actual difference between the temperatures of today and those in the 20s and 30s.The system is never constant.And to declare the end of the world because of a couple of tenths of degrees is a joke.

It is just this tenth of a degree that can have monstrous consequences.Yes, it could - always this lack of reality.The problem is that the media make a big show out of these temperature differences, that lie in the error range of the measurement.The ways that we measure are, for example simply too inaccurate.To repeat.It has gotten warmer in the last century, but climate is a system that always varies.And it is a turbulent system.You cannot think about it dogmatically.The main question remains, are these 0.5 degrees a large or a small variation, is it serious or not.We don’t know.No one should be ashamed to say that it remains much too unknown.And a couple of degrees still don’t make an eternal summer.

You took part in the third IPCC report.What is your opinion of the fourth?

First I would have to see the report.Up to now we know only about the Summary for Policy Makers.The report itself was finished last October.Now they need months in order to bring it into agreement with the Summary.If a company did that with its annual report it would be front page news in all the papers.And not to their advantage.

Why did you not participate in the fourth (IPCC) report?No time.I had participated - by writing a couple of pages.There were hundreds of scientists, in teams, where two or three were responsible for a couple of pages.They flew all over the world for years.You can’t work that way.

Assume you are right, everything will not be so bad, the data is not good enough -even when most strongly dispute that.What is it about?Many interest groups have discovered climate change.Everyone of the will profit from it except the normal consumer.The latter must be maneuvered by propaganda.The scientists profit, they have increased funding by more that a factor of ten since the early 90s.Then there is the ecological movement, a multi-billion operation, thousands of organization.And the difficulty is we solved the problems of normal air and water pollution, we eliminated those.One needs problems that cannot be eliminated.That makes climate change attractive.And industry, which you assume is against CO2 controls, they also profit.They are perhaps opposed, because it is again something that makes problems for them, that they have to accommodate to.But they can make money from it.The large companies live off of climate change.Last year I spoke with someone from the big coal producer Arch Coal.He said he is for CO2 preventative measures.I asked him, is that for real, a coal company, want CO2 restrictions?He said - Sure, we will manage it, but our smaller competition will not.

The energy giant Exxon Mobil was against it.Yes, the has a CEO that fought CO2 restrictions on principle.But what industry wants is 1.They want to determine the restrictions themselves.2.All companies should have the same restriction, 3.They want to know in advance how to prepare themselves.Then they can lay off the huge costs on consumers.

And what are your interests?I have been working for decades in this area, we are beginning to understand how things work, how it functions.Then we were rolled over by the simplified claim that climate depends only on CO2.And thus every hope of finding out, for example how ice ages work, was destroyed.Suddenly everyone said, all scientists are united, as if we still lived in the Soviet Union

Today Russian scientists are moving away from the consensusSome yes, others not.It is a question of which generation they belong to.The older ones cut away, the younger get in line.Russia has a long tradition in climate research.The current older scientists were world leaders.And they know that this simplified way of looking at things makes no sense.The younger ones are not distinguished but they want invitations to visit Europe - so they collaborate and do what Europe wants.

Is the world so simple

Sometimes yes.The was a meeting in Moscow, organized by the Russian Academe and David King, who is today the scientific advisor to the British government.When he heard that they had also invited people like me, he wanted to cancel.But he was already at the airport.So he came and spoke first and said that he would invite Russian scientists who shared his point of view to come to England.

You laugh.Do you find it funny?

No, but that’s the way the world is.

When did you get mad for the first time?In 1987 I received a letter from a man by the name of Lester Lave, a well known economics professor at Carnegie-Mellon-University in Pittsburgh.He wrote, he had testified in a Senate hearing, Al Gore was also there by the way.Lave said then that the science was still very uncertain about what the causes of climate change were.Al Gore threw him out of the hearing with the words that anyone who said that didn’t know what he was talking about

But Al Gore is really not a scientist.Well, he was on TV after his Film opened in the movie theatres.The moderator asked him, why he believes that sea level could go up by about six meters, when science talks about 40 cm.He answered that science knows no such thing.He knows it.I think Al Gore is crazy.

You are enraged, when a politician says something about science?

Yes, I ensured Lester Lave, that science really can never be sure.But it became serious shortly after Newsweeek 1988 came out with its front page article about global warming.I began to publicly say that I thought the data too weak to reach a final conclusion.Many colleagues said that they were happy that someone finally said it.But as the older Bush raised the funding for climate research from 170 million dollars to 2 billion the institutions figured out that their future was connected with climate change.Even at MIT there exists a difference of opinion about this, not about the basic idea that temperature increases, CO2 is a greenhouse gas.But we differ on whether climate change is an important topic.And there I differ from most of my colleagues.I believe that it is not a serious topic.I think it is important to think about the causes of the Ice Ages.

What do you know about Ice Ages?Very little.Ice Ages correlate somehow with orbital parameters, but we don’t know how this has influenced climate change.Those are serious topics in atmospheric dynamics.I can tell you - We know very little

How to we approach the solutionNo one wants to solve the problem, because then the money will stop flowing.

Listen, Mr. Lindzen, what really is your opinion about the nature of peopleI see it this way, the way it is, not as I would like it.After the signing of the Montreal Protocols in 1987 for protecting the ozone layer research support disappeared.Ozone was not a problem anymore - even though it still is.The stratospheric chemist work today in the area of stratosphere and climate.Politics pays science, we are very dependent on it.

Who pays for that?

NASA.Sometimes no one.I tell you, they don’t want to solve the problem.Uncertainty is essential for alarmism.The argument is always the same.It may perhaps be uncertain, but that makes it also possible.

Are you saying that we cannot do anything about climate change?Are we doomed?I say:We should not do anything.We really have other problems.If I, as an American look at Europe, then I see a continent that does not care about terrorism, that Iran could become a nuclear power, expanding Islam, but worries about climate change.That is a form of societal stupidity.Europe wants to feel that it is good and important.That is dumb.And, at the same time no European country will meet the Kyoto goals.No, I don’t understand any of this.We need to buy new electric lights?What does that help?Is everyone going to screw them in?I hope that this stops soon.Why should it? That is people’s natureThat someone declares the end of the world every couple of years and then forgets that it has not happened?That can’t be.Sooner or later people get tired of the story and turn to something else.Surveys in the US already show such a trend.Reality is that Honda has built a small, very good hybrid car.It does not sell.People want a fat Toyota Prius so the neighbors will know that they have bought a hybrid.

What kind of car do you drive?

An old Honda Accord 1998

What do you really believe?

I am somewhat religious, more of a believer in any case than an observer.Something besides mankind exists.

And in spite of that you also cannot be sure that mankind has no influence on climate?No one says that.But anyone who says that people are the cause of this or that is wrong.No one doubts that CO2 absorbs infrared, and thus has an influence.But if you double the CO2 concentration, the temperature would rise an entire degree (oC).We could not observe that.I cannot believe that the world was so poorly constructed that it could not withstand such a change - it has already mastered many (such) changes.

Do humans believe that the world must die because we are mortal?We live in a time of pessimism.It was the same in the 19th century.Then the Royal Society wrote in a report to the government that the electrification of England was too dangerous for normal people, one would do better by choosing gas.People profit today more than ever from scientific progress but don’t have the slightest clue how their equipment operates.That is a loss of control.This is why Al Gore puts forth a highly simplified picture of global warming, that ever five year old can understand.It gives people the feeling that they understand what is going on.And that they can do something about it.Unfortunately it is not the case

25 comments:

Nils Simon
said...

I especially love the part when it comes to European politics, which is more my field of expertise than climatology. Being German and living in England, I can't help but laughing that we should care more about terrorism! I'm so glad that hysteria about terrorism is so much lower here than what I hear from the US. Europe does not care about Iran's nuclear programme? Well, probably Lindzen then should read newspapers that not only deal with the US but with real world politics. Then he might be able to discover that several European countries are deeply involved in talks with Iran to stop its nuclear programme.

Europe is not concerned about Islamism? That's probably the reason why Germany just sent a bunch of Tornado planes to Afghanistan and has a few thousand soldiers in that very country's northern territory. I personally don't even think that's wise. However, the difference is nobody here in Europe is hysteric about islamism and terrorism, but rather concerned at most.

Claiming Europe was "societally stupid" because it was hysteric about climate change and not hysteric enough about "real" threats gets more awkward with every minute I think about it. The states of the world spend 1 trillion Dollars each year for their militaries. Half of that amount is being spent by the US. How can any country be more hysteric about threats than this figure reveals the US is? I hope Europe will never imitate that security-related hysteria! And Europe just decided to cut CO2 levels by 20% until 2020. Sounds good, but with the usual base level of 1990, this actually amounts to a reduction of about 5%. Hardly hysteric, I think.

the world will endlike Islamistsscientists were suppressedcorrupt scienceGeorge Orwellinsanity and corruptionintellectual incompetenceend of the worldmaneuvered by propagandaincreased fundingmulti-billion operation simplified claimSoviet Unioncrazyalarmismsocietal stupidityend of the world

Lindzen seems to have a somewhat ambivalent relationship with the truth and reality.

He counts himself as a holocaust survivor even though his parents left Germany a few years before he was born. What about those of us whose ancestors left Germany 10, 50, or 100 years before we were born? Do we count, too?

He claims Gore has a corrupt interest in global warming because he has stock in Google and Apple (among others).

He claims the temperature now is the same as it was in the twenties and thirties - not even close to true.

These things make me doubt his claims that critics are persecuted, but, if true, that is still a very powereful argument against the IPCC program.

Here's one contradiction:"Then we were rolled over by the simplified claim that climate depends only on CO2."

"The influence of CO2 is much smaller that the models have predicted. You then have to choices. The model is false or the model is right and something unknown makes up the difference. The modelers have unfortunately taken the second way and claim that aerosols make up the difference.The modelers have unfortunately taken the second way and claim that aerosols make up the difference. "

Lindzen really ought to stick to either story, not assume that no one will notice that he switches as fits him for the moment. He can't both accuse the modellers of only caring about CO2 and of caring too much about aerosols.

I did a little research and now I see what you are saying -- and where I was going astray in my thinking above.

I was not understanding the problem correctly and I think you are correct in your assessment of the source of Lindzen's 1C sensitivity value. I belive he is actually assuming that his Iris Effect will hold the temperature to 1C for a CO2 doubling:

I found this on a NASA site, which talks about Lindzen's Iris Hypothesis:

"Lindzen’s team to propose that the Earth has an adaptive infrared iris—a built in “check-and-balance” mechanism that effectively counters global warming (Lindzen et al. 2001). Much like the iris in a human eye contracts to allow less light to pass through the pupil in a brightly lit environment, Lindzen suggests that the area covered by high cirrus clouds contracts to allow more heat to escape into outer space from a very warm environment.

As Lindzen explains (from a quote on th NASA site)"if you double the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere but don’t have any feedback within the system, you only get about 1 degree of warming (averaged over the entire globe). But climate models predict a much greater global warming because of the positive feedback of water vapor. Yet these models are missing potentially another negative feedback (the infrared iris) which can be anywhere between a fraction of a degree and 1 degree—the same order of magnitude as the warming.” (The net result would then be that the Iris’ negative feedback cancels the water vapor’s positive feedback. The warming for a doubling of carbon dioxide would then return to the 1°C that scientists predict would occur if there were no feedbacks.)"

IEHO Lindzen wanted to put a full stop to the term "Klimaleugner" which was translated as denier. He probably figured no one would follow up. OTOH, the thirties were very tough times for Jews in German, and his parents almost certainly communicated that to him. His hostility to Islam and Moslems comes across clearly and thanks to Nils Simon who pretty much nails his insularity.

As for me, the most crazy thing was the bit about warming occurring from 1976 to 1986, and then going flat. That is one of the reasons you need someone with some knowledge of the data and theory to interview such slippery folk.

What do you really believe?I am somewhat religious, more of a believer in any case than an observer. Something besides mankind exists.

I have trouble understanding how Lindzen interpreted this as anything other than a question about his beliefs about global warming .Why this hard right turn to religion?

And in spite of that you also cannot be sure that mankind has no influence on climate?No one says that. But anyone who says that people are the cause of this or that is wrong. No one doubts that CO2 absorbs infrared, and thus has an influence. But if you double the CO2 concentration, the temperature would rise an entire degree (C). We could not observe that. I cannot believe that the world was so poorly constructed that it could not withstand such a change - it has already mastered many (such) changes.

Next Lindzen makes a reference to the world being 'constructed'. I hope it's just irresponsible anthropomorphism - but given the previous un-called-for mention of religion, I can't help but suspect creationism. Someone please tell me Lindzen is not a creationist.

Do humans believe that the world must die because we are mortal?We live in a time of pessimism. It was the same in the 19th century. Then the Royal Society wrote in a report to the government that the electrification of England was too dangerous for normal people, one would do better by choosing gas. People profit today more than ever from scientific progress but don't have the slightest clue how their equipment operates. That is a loss of control. This is why Al Gore puts forth a highly simplified picture of global warming, that ever five year old can understand. It gives people the feeling that they understand what is going on. And that they can do something about it. Unfortunately it is not the case

Finally - who is he accusing of 'pessimism'? Of declaring the end of the world? Yet it is Lindzen himself who claims nothing can be done.

It is quite possible, of course, that Lindzen still believes his iris effect is correct, the evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.

But I think that rather than trying to stamp the "denialist" (or "dishonest") moniker on Lindzen (which is actually counterproductive, since he turns that back on his critics as "a personal attack on him and his family"), one needs to emphasize two things

1) Lindzen is very much outside the climate science mainstream (as represented by IPCC) with regard to his views on global warming.

2) those views (ie, his Iris effect) are not supported by the science. In fact they are have been shown to be false.

Have a little more humility guys? Lindzen is a highly respected climate scientist, not a crank, and -- who knows? -- maybe some of what he says is true. Or, for you true believers, is that possiblity too scary to even entertain? Lighten up!

Hi Luke, so what do you do when your highly respected climate scientist is running around telling everyone he can grab that all the other highly respected climate scientists are kooks and whores? Also when his last few speculations (which were taken seriously, see iris effect) don't pan out and he won't let go.

BTW the same thing happened in the 80s with a guy named S. Fred Singer. People gave him space for years and years based on his reputation, before they realized that what he was doing was driven by his politics. You could look it up.

Ah, yes I see Jonas, you always break bread eith and lavish praise on folk who call you scum of the earth? I thought not. The interesting thing is that the small core of scientific denialist have run a two faced operation for a lot of years, demanding that others they disagree with "treat them fairly" and then dumping on everyone else. Eli believes some eyes are opening.

As to the post, friend, it is your idol the esteemed climate scientist calling himself a kook and everyone else a whore. After the first paragraph it is all Dick and the Weltwoche interviewer. Speaks for itself, it does.

It sounds like Mr. Lindzen is implying that world leaders and its citizens are not capable of reading the reports coming from the IPCC, and that we cannot decide for ourselves what is significant. We can and we are. Al Gore may not be a scientist, but if he can use his celebrity to get us to think about the future of our planet when we go about our daily lives, then I support his grass-roots efforts. He is definitely my kind of super star.

Mr. Lindzen gets very upset when someone questions him about getting money from oil companies. He is emphatic that he does not. Okay, but on his MIT web page it states, “He (Mr. Lindzen) is a consultant to the Global Modeling and Simulation Group at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, and a Distinguished Visiting Scientist at California Institute of Technology's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.” I’m not sure but I believe that both of these organizations get funding from the US government. I would like to ask Mr. Lindzen, in front of Congress, how much of his total income and research funding comes from the US Government. If any, then his findings may come into question as being “politically motivated.”

Should we be more worried about terrorists, or the oil they have because our Alaskan oil pipes are sinking into the melting permafrost, and our offshore drills just got slammed by some record breaking storms at sea?

Why is Mr. Lindzen bothering to argue why the earth is warming? The data is showing that whatever the cause, the world is in for some serious problems in the next 20-30 years. If the projections are even marginally correct, Africa and Asia will not have enough food or water for its people in this generation.

I think that we (the US) are afraid to admit the cause, because we have contributed to it by such a large percentage. The notion that we may be responsible as a society for the deaths of millions through our greed for SUV’s and plastic, is more than any of us can endure. Talk about wanting a scapegoat!

CapitalistImperialistPig wrote:"...He counts himself as a holocaust survivor even though his parents left Germany a few years before he was born..."

Richard Lindzen was born in 1940. His parents fled Germany, proper in 1938. Many Jews found the holocaust right on their heels as they fled across Europe. Even if he were born in the USA he can make a valid claim to being a holocaust survivor, since the genocide was ongoing until 1944-45.

I have to wonder about the willingness of people to check their facts before they brazenly engage in cheap shots that could be easily construed as antisemitic bias.

Lindzen is an apostate, but he's no shill. He distrusts Al Gore, Maurice Strong and other ambitious pseudo-green opportunists. He suspects that there are some variables that the current climate models have gotten wrong, and his reason is that the maximum effect cap of CO2 is 3/4's of its way through its asymptote (and I don't think it's a dry air asymptote). None of this makes him wrong, just controversial. He takes aim at people he either distrusts or reviles. This debate went down that 4-inch pipe a long-assed time ago....

Lindzen has alluded to aerosols, and so it turns out the missing warming agent that Lindzen long suspected may in fact be airborne soot, long thought to have a net cooling effect. So it turns out, airborne soot has a net heating effect, causing atmospheric heating up to 50% of what has heretofore been ascribed to CO2 w/in large sooty brown clouds.

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Eli Rabett

Eli Rabett, a not quite failed professorial techno-bunny who finally handed in the keys and retired from his wanna be research university. The students continue to be naive but great people and the administrators continue to vary day-to-day between homicidal and delusional without Eli's help. Eli notices from recent political developments that this behavior is not limited to administrators. His colleagues retain their curious inability to see the holes that they dig for themselves. Prof. Rabett is thankful that they, or at least some of them occasionally heeded his pointing out the implications of the various enthusiasms that rattle around the department and school. Ms. Rabett is thankful that Prof. Rabett occasionally heeds her pointing out that he is nuts.